Syracuse University dean creates database to locate shipwrecks

Submitted photoCathryn R. Newton, a dean emerita from Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences, has completed a database of more than 2,000 shipwrecks along the Southeastern coast of the United States.

By Amanda Seef
Contributing writer

Cathryn R. Newton's infatuation with shipwrecks set sail during her teen years -- as a member of her father's research team that in 1973 discovered the wreckage of the USS Monitor, a Civil War icon, off the coast of North Carolina.

Thirty-six years later, Newton has completed a database of more than 2,000 shipwrecks along the Southeastern coast of the United States. Newton, a dean emerita from Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences, unveiled the database this month in a lecture at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

"It has potential for a radical re-envisioning of what can be done with nautical archaeology," Newton said of the searchable database that details 2,038 wrecks dating from 1526. "It shifts what we know about shipwrecks and how we know it."

The database includes ship names, types, sizes and locations of the vessels, sinking dates, cargo information, passengers, departure dates and intended destinations. It is a collaboration of scientific and cultural information about the ill-fated vessels. The information was entered and re-checked by research assistants at Syracuse University, where Newton still teaches.

"It was a labor of love," said Newton, who sees the wrecks the same way other scientists view animal remains. The title of her recent talk was "Shipwrecks as Fossils."

Newton's passion for sunken ships was fostered by her father, John Newton, an oceanographer at Duke University. Her new database was created from nearly 5,000 hand-written notecards compiled by her dad and other researchers.

The elder Newton had a keen interest in the Civil War, in particular the early ironclad ship the USS Monitor. The warship was lost at sea in December 1862 after being overwhelmed by rough waters and flooding. Sixteen men died when the ship went down off the coast of Cape Hatteras, N.C.

On Aug. 17, 1973, a team led by John Newton, which included a then 16-year-old Duke sophomore Cathryn Newton, departed to find the wreckage. The researchers used sonar imaging, a seismic apparatus and other new technology aboard Duke's research vessel, the Eastward. The team found the ship in 10 days.

"The excitement was just visceral," Cathryn Newton said.

Newton remembers the crew's jubilation, followed by a deep, hollowing silence, after they found the lost ship.

"There it was for the first time in 112 years," she said. "We were looking at a shipwreck that was also a grave."

That pivotal moment has remained the basis for Newton's continued work on the database project. After her father's death in 1984, Cathryn Newton continued to collect and catalog information on shipwrecks. Twenty-five years later, the database is complete and will be launched for public use next year, along with a book about shipwrecks.

Information Newton has acquired has been used to help find other sunken ships off the Southeastern coast, such as the Queen Anne's Revenge, the ship sailed by the famous pirate Blackbeard. Searchers contacted Newton multiple times prior to finding the wreck in the late 1990s. It was found loaded with cannons and other artifacts that confirmed it was the ship of Blackbeard.

"Shipwrecks tell us some kinds of things that exceptional sights such as Pompeii might tell us," Newton said. "They really are time capsules."

Newton says the database is one-of-a-kind, as it has chronicled cultural points, such as if babies were born on lifeboats from the sinking ships and other little-known facts.

"(The database) is a new way of looking at an absolutely fascinating subject," Newton said. "It's just about to get more interesting, and the work is happening right here in Syracuse."